He answered in pajama pants hiked up to his ribs. “This better be good. It’s the middle of the night.”

It was eight thirty.

“Sorry it’s so late,” she apologized. “Can I come in?”

“Do what you want,” Wallace grumbled and tottered back to the recliner he’d vacated.

She followed him inside to a roomy apartment. The living room had a TV over an electric fireplace. There was a small kitchenette and a table with chairs for six. She wondered if he’d ever had anyone sit around the table.

“Why do you live here?” she asked him. “You’re healthy. In good shape. You don’t have to be in senior living.”

“You sound like you think you know the answer. Why do you think I live here instead of alone in a house?”

She thought about the first time she’d come here. He’d been doing research in the library, grumbling at other residents when he could have just as easily cracked the books in his apartment. He chose to come to her house, with the noise and the dust and the cats and the people, nearly every day to wade through books and papers and mementos that he could have taken home with him.

“Because you’re substituting residents and staff for real family,” she guessed. The man was lonely. Worse, he was grumpy about being lonely.

“Think you’re so smart,” he grumbled with no real heat.

“I think I’m lonely, too,” she admitted. “And I think I keep busy so I don’t have time to think about how lonely I am.”

“Eh. Boohoo.” He snorted.

Noticing the only personal memento in the space, she picked up the framed photo on the mantel.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“Florence. Not that it’s any of your business,” he harrumphed, angling to the side to see the TV screen.

“Who was Florence?”

Wallace let out a long-suffering sigh and, with dramatic reluctance, turned off the M*A*S*H rerun. “You’re not here to ask about Florence.”

“I’m here to discuss a couple of hypotheses with a top researcher,” she countered. “Who was Florence?”

“Florence was my high school sweetheart. She is a retired librarian over in Aberdeen who married a good-for-nothing insurance salesman after I hemmed and hawed too much over asking her to marry me.”

“Was he really good-for-nothing or are you just saying that because he got the girl?”

“Everyone else seemed to like him,” he admitted. “But I don’t think he gave her everything she deserved.”

“Would you have?”

“Does it matter? I had my head shoved too far up my ass trying to make the right decision. I was worried it was too soon, that I didn’t make enough to support the two of us, let alone a family. I needed more time to get my ducks in a row.”

“And she didn’t want to wait?” she guessed.